The Triathlon Shop’s online sales climbed600% last year with Brightpearl

Key facts

£16,000

20 hours

2010

Brightpearl has been an outstanding investment. Managing all aspects of our business including inventory, orders, CRM, online, in-store, and accounting in one central system has made our lives a lot less complicated.

— Jon Burrage, Owner

Watch Jon and Holly's story

The background

The Triathlon Shop stock a wide range of clothing and equipment for swimming, running and cycling. They currently have ten full-time members of staff and every employee is an enthusiastic triathlete who can give customers advice from first hand experience. In fact, Jon and Holly can often be found at the starting line next to their customers. The majority of their sales are done through their shop but they also sell through their Shopify website and via eBay. They've recently expanded into new, larger premises early in 2014, we caught up with Jon to find out more about their story and exciting new plans.

The integration challenge

“Previously we were using a mishmash of software including Microsoft Dynamics RMS and Kashflow. This was all working fine when we were starting out but once we started our website and began to sell on eBay our inventory became impossible to manage. If an item sold on eBay we would have to manually go through and change the inventory levels in store and on the website. We began to lose track very quickly, the administration was a little bit overwhelming.”

Key challenges:

Inaccurate inventory levels

Disconnection between multiple sales channels

Lack of data and insight into the business

“Doing an inventory count was very time consuming. Being able to keep track of inventory and make sure we were accounting for everything was becoming more and more difficult. We knew we had to find a solution to help manage our inventory problems.”

The inventory management solution

“Brightpearl came recommended to us and it was my wife Holly who was very keen to find out more about the software. When we looked into the system we were blown away by everything that came alongside inventory management. The integrations to eBay, webstores and the valuable integrated accounting are great features. As well as being able to manage our orders in one place, our customer database and the ability to create follow up appointments. We can manage our eBay sales, our in-store sales and online sales all from one screen - its a huge help for us. It saves us time, money and improves our customer service.”

“A big step forwards for us is being able to match our invoices to purchase orders within the same system. It makes accounting so much easier. The fact that Brightpearl encompasses so many features means our business data is up-to-date and reliable. Being able to see our accounts in real time helps us to make informed decisions and allows us to keep our eye on the ball.”

“All you need to access Brightpearl is a web browser as its cloud based which is great. We can login from home, at the shop or on the move. We even accessed Brightpearl on our honeymoon just to see how the shop was getting on when we were on the other side of the world!”

The future

“Brightpearl’s services and integrations have allowed us to grow our business and it fits with the way we want to grow our business. You can add modules on as you go, which really works for us. We found the new shop which is in a much better location in Bristol and it's twice as big as our old location. We now have the capabilities to hold more stock and serve more people. We’re really looking forward to 2015 and growing with the help of Brightpearl.”